An English Murder by Cyril Hare

Author:Cyril Hare
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: mystery, holiday, cozy
Published: 2012-09-02T00:54:55+00:00

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[Pg 130]

CHAPTER XI

John Wilkes and William Pitt

The muniment room was darker than ever that morning, by reason of the snow that had piled itself thickly against its narrow windows, and it was, if anything, even colder than it had been the day before; but Dr. Bottwink entered it with a sigh of relief. He had gone there immediately on leaving the breakfast table, partly out of habit, but partly, as he realized when he looked around him, in response to an instinct that drove him to seek refuge from the horrors and perplexities of the present in the only world that was entirely real to him.

He closed the door behind him with a sigh of relief. Nothing, he was quick to reassure himself, had been touched. Sergeant Rogers had evidently not yet extended his search to this remote corner of the house. His papers remained precisely as he had left them. On the desk still lay the half-illegible document that he had abandoned undeciphered when Briggs had summoned him to meet the house-party at tea-time yesterday. Dr. Bottwink smiled bitterly to himself as he confirmed the fact. Yesterday! Could it be as recent as that? He shrugged his shoulders. Yesterday was history already,[Pg 131] and ugly, sordid history at that. It was no more real and no less remote than the date when the tiresome little manuscript yonder had come into existence. Perhaps some future historian might find yesterday worth investigating and recording, but he doubted it. Sergeant Rogers might write its history, if he could; he—Bottwink—preferred the eighteenth century.

He looked at his watch. In less than half an hour's time he was due to join the others in Lord Warbeck's room to perform the grisly ceremony of wishing him the compliments of the season. Much though he would have wished to do so, it was a duty he could hardly refuse. There was no time, then, to do any serious work. All the same, since he was there, he might as well glance again at the document. He could, perhaps, read enough to assure himself that it was of no importance. It was worth trying. He would give it a quarter of an hour, or twenty minutes at the most.... He settled himself at the desk, switched on the reading lamp, carefully polished his glasses and drew the yellowed sheet towards him.

Familiar as he was with the atrocious script of the third Lord Warbeck, he was for some time completely unable to make head or tail of the blotted scrawl. He would have abandoned the task altogether, had not some sixth sense told him that it was worth while to persist. At last, first a name and then a date emerged from the welter of ink marks. The name was one familiar enough to every student of history, but Dr. Bottwink had never encountered it before in[Pg 132] the Warbeck papers. In conjunction with that particular date, it was possible—likely, even—that it might prove to be the clue to something important.

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